The Web
by Ranger75
Summary: As Rapture breathes its last, one citizen takes in a wounded Spider Splicer. Is there more to this crazed woman than meets the eye?
1. Said the Spider

The place had gone to hell. Ten days ago, a small army of splicers had torn up the Kashmir Restaurant, kicking off what the newspapers were calling the Rapture Civil War. Parts of the city were sectioned off, practically free-fire zones: Apollo's Square was the worst. Fires were started with no one to fight them, people were organizing hunting parties to simply go buy groceries. Anyone walking alone, at night or day- it didn't matter anymore, took the chance of being torn to pieces by the crazed splicers on either side, or worse, recruited into the Big Daddy program. The whole place was a warzone, but the frontlines were everywhere. Nowhere was safe, there was no where to run.  
>Stuck in the middle of it all was me- John Marshall, citizen of Rapture. Single, no family in Rapture, to much of a workaholic to have many friends, I was sticking out what I figured to be the worst of the battle in my apartment in Olympus Heights all alone. I had stocked up on food, bought a shotgun and enough ammo to scare off some of the lesser splicers, and boarded up my windows and door. It was a foolproof plan. For a while, I was able to set myself high above the burning ruins of Rapture, the mountaintop of safety amid the valleys of despair. However, my paradise in hell theory was not to come to fruition. Five weeks in, I was bored to death. It sounds silly now, but after the television and radio had conked out, I honestly had nothing to do. I tried to do some paperwork, as asinine as that now probably sounds, even though I had no illusions of ever returning to work. I fixed pipes that didn't leak, I patched walls with no holes, I spent hours counting the boards in my floor and the tiles in my bathroom. That last incident convinced me that if I didn't get out soon, I would go as crazy as the splicers. So, one night, I gingerly pried the boards off of my door, taking care to at least lock it behind me, and wandered out into the city. I had timed my outing with a temporary lull in the fighting that came with the late nighttime hours. I took everything in, it was a different city entirely than I had lived in five weeks ago. Houses were burned out, shot marks pocked the walls, and the night was lit by the glowing embers of the still-burning city. I skirted the Big Daddies making their rounds, and make my way towards where I remembered a little grocery shop to be. When I got there, most of the good stuff was either ruined or looted. I packed up a few more shotgun shells I found under the counter, and a few assorted foodstuffs from the shelves. Just as I was about to return home and end my moonlight escapade, a bullet whizzed by my ear, smashing into the cash register. This opening shot was followed by many others, as well as cries of loyalty to Ryan or Atlas: the splicers were fighting it out just a few yards away from me! Thinking quickly, I sealed myself inside of one of the coolers, tearing out the power cords and the shelves to make room for myself. The frosted class protected me from the ten minute battle, I still hoped to make it home with my loot before the fighting really got back into full swing. However, Rapture had other plans.<p>

No sooner had I stepped out of the cooler, shivering, then I almost walked straight into a pistol wielding splicer. I barely had time to mutter "Oh shit!" before he raised his gun to my head. A split second later, I heard a sickening _splat_ and the splicer's neck was slashed open by some kind of curved hook. I reeled backwards as the man sunk to the ground, blood pouring out of his neck. I looked around for my savior, but saw no one. "How strange," I thought, examining the hook that had felled my assailant. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a shadow shift through the flickering light. I swore loudly and readied my shotgun. I saw the shadow again, this time accompanied by a metallic clinking noise. I tracked the shadowy figure for a few seconds, it seemed to be circling me. I watched, horrified, as a human figure, silhouetted against the ocean view, descended towards me. As it stumbled towards me, I backed away from the corpse of the gun-wielding man. The figure paused over the body, then reached down and drew out the hook with a terrible sucking noise. "Fucking shit," I mumbled, shouldering my gun. As the figure stepped into the neon light of the market, I saw what the news had been calling a "spider splicer". A female, with a dazed face, carrying a hook in each hand. We stared at each other for a second. Then she started to pace forward. "Hey," I said shakily, backing up, "Th-thanks for uh... taking care of that guy." No response. "You want something? From me? Anything- it's yours. Really!" At this, she stopped. By this point she had stepped further into the light, I could see her better. She was what I would call a new splicer- she wasn't as far gone as the others. Physically, they looked almost like normal people. She didn't have the boils or long gashes of some of the older splicers, but she still had that dead look in her eyes, the ragged, unkempt hair- this woman was still a splicer, and still dangerous.

She took one more step forward, then tilted her head to the side and half-whispered, half-groaned "Help me," before sinking to her knees and toppling over. I lowered my shotgun, still wary of any splicery tricks, but approached the seemingly-unconscious splicer. I stood over her, prodded her with my shotgun- she was definitely out cold. The back of her ragged cocktail dress was ripped open, showing the telltale deep purple bruises of the sonic boom plasmid. This woman had taken quite a hit, her ribs had to have been shattered. Part of me wanted to end her suffering, or to just get rid of her. I raised my gun to the back of her head, prepared to put her down. She groaned in pain, and I reconsidered. She had saved me, and she wasn't so far gone as the other splicers, maybe I could do something for her. Bandage her up and then kick her back out, or something like that. I knew I had to make a decision fast, so I pried the hooks out of her hands and gathered her limp form in my arms, leaving the food I had looted. "What have I gotten myself into?" I thought as I hurried home, spider splicer in tow.


	2. Entangled

I had no idea what to make of her for the first few days. She was out cold for the first part, regaining consciousness in pieces. She certainly seemed to be in a great deal of pain, and her destroyed ribs weren't her only injury. I still wasn't sure what I was going to do with her, but she had saved me, so I felt that I should at least get her back into fighting shape. I didn't know how far gone her mind was, whether she would recognize me as the man who helped her, or simply gut me in a mindless rage. For this reason, I zip-tied her wrists to my bed posts. I hoped she wouldn't be so enraged that she would gut me as soon as she could free herself. I wasn't yet sure about her mind, but at least her body hadn't yet taken on the splicer physique. This isn't to say she wasn't fucked up: her back was still torn up, she was covered in bruises and assorted cuts, and she looked a little malnourished. For the first week or so, I could only give her medical attention while she slept. While she was awake, she screamed and thrashed. She obviously didn't remember wanting my help, and I would have kicked her out if I hadn't thought that she would gut me as soon as I cut her free. Besides, I felt some sort of weird obligation to her, like I had agreed to fix her. To flush her system of excess ADAM, I made her drink huge amounts of water before I would feed her anything. If she was going to get better, it would be made easier with her mind cleared. While she slept, I kept tabs on her many wounds. Her back was almost completely healed, and I had pried all of the shrapnel and splinters out of her skin. I struggled to preserve her modesty, even though at that point she was barely sane. Her cocktail dress had long been shredded, so I found her a practically intact replacement from one of the abandoned stores.  
>Inside my apartment, I labored with almost obsessive abandon. I let my charge consume my time. I spent my days trying to keep her pacified and calm, and my nights picking over the ruins for more medical equipment. I became- to a degree- obsessed with her. Though it was obvious she had no love for me, I was overjoyed at every indication of her improving health. With nothing else to focus my attention on, she became all-important to me. The days turned into weeks, weeks into months. I began to let her off of the bed, let her roam around the apartment. Though she was no longer directly hostile to me, she still tried to escape almost daily. I let her go ahead with these efforts as long as I was sure that they would not succeed, as I felt that any opportunity for her to exercise her mind was worth it. Her speech was also improving, she was communicating with me, though still not in a friendly manner, and sometimes asking questions. She still seemed to have very little memory, losing a lot from day to day. It was then that I stopped looking at her simply as a pet project, a laboratory experiment, and instead as another person. I wasn't satisfied with her return to physical health, I wanted to cure her mind as well. However, her physical recovery was satisfying: her hair had returned to what I presumed it looked like before she over-spliced- thin, dark brunette strands were replacing the worn grey. Her green eyes were no longer bloodshot, their wild gaze had been replaced with a distant curiosity. Her callouses, cuts, and scars were fading, her skin was starting to return to a softer, feminine tone. I was rather impressed with my success, considering that I had very little practical medical experience at the time.<p>

Still, I had hit a road block with her mind. She seemed incapable of regarding me as anything more than a captor, and my progress slowed to a complete halt. I tried to bribe her, in a way, spending hours scavenging for women's clothing and other trinkets. She sensed what I was trying to do and exploited it, and soon I found myself picking through rubble and dodging Big Daddies to find a specific perfume or a silk scarf. In hindsight, I probably shouldn't have let myself become that intent on appeasing her, but at the time I was just glad that some part of her brain still remembered the woman that she was, and desired to return to it. Still, the process was agonizingly slow: though she remembered the names of perfumes and designer brands, she could not remember what they were used for. Her clothing was always askew, and she frequently stole parts of my wardrobe to haphazardly add to her own. I was content to let her carry on as such, and eventually her barriers started to come down. I no longer had to tie her to the bed, and her escape attempts became few and far between. If she caught me reading she would peer over my shoulder, trying to decipher the reasons behind my interest in the bundle of paper. She started asking questions about how things worked, why they were there. For a few weeks we trekked on in this fashion, I eagerly noted every step forward she made.  
>One night, just before I was going to send her to bed, she approached me with that "I-don't-know-if-I-should-ask-but-I-will-anyway" look that she always had when she had a question.<br>"What is it?" I asked, as she toyed with a tassel on my furniture.  
>"I... had another question. For you," she answered, her voice still detached, but more playful than in the weeks before.<br>"Sure," I said, happy to oblige her.  
>"Why are you... keeping me here, with you?" she asked, still playing with the tassel.<br>I was taken aback. I had no answer. "I-I... well..." She lost interest when I didn't give an immediate response, and padded off to bed. I still fumbled around, looking in my mind for an answer. I watched her get ready for sleep, going through the motions even though she probably didn't understand why. As she closed the door to the bedroom and snuffed out the light, a dam broke in my mind. All kinds of feelings flooded through me: my paternal feelings, my lust, my obsession, everything I had felt in the past months. Above it all, though, one reigned supreme. "My god," I mused as I sank down into my chair, "I'm in love."


	3. Spinning Stranger

I tried to ignore my feelings for the next few days, I wanted to stifle them away deep down inside myself. But it was no use. I now saw this woman in a completely different light than I had the day before. I began noticing things that would've been unthinkable when I first recovered her. I felt sick. I doubt she could pick up on exactly what I was thinking, but she could tell something had changed. I don't know what tipped her off, but she seemed intrigued by the change. She pestered me all day, studying my responses. Maybe she felt that I was sick, she thought she might exploit it. By then she had learned that when I was not feeling well, I would give in to her demands more quickly. She was right about one thing: I felt awful. I started to question my motivations for everything involving her: did everything I had done come down to lust? I figured I was doing something for the good of someone else, but now my new thoughts settled into my stomach like a lead brick. I couldn't eat, I couldn't read, and I especially couldn't converse with the splicer. _Were her eyes always that big and round? Did she always walk like that? When did she start pouting her lips that way?_No, even being around her for the next few days was awful for me.  
>She had gotten fixated on going outside. The idea of it dominated everything else on her mind she flitted about the house, trying to do small tasks for me in an effort to please me enough so that I would let her outside for a bit. The sight of this only the week before would have amused and pleased me, but now I couldn't stand it. I felt like vomiting every time she came pattering up to me, tugging at my arm, telling me about how she'd sorted our clothes or cleaned- and by this she meant destroyed- one of my watches. She meant well, but I just didn't feel like having anything to do with her. She felt it, and became dejected. She thought she had done something wrong, and struggled to make it up to me. After pushing her away yet again the next day, I noticed her eyes were filling up with tears. <em>Oh god. Oh no. <em>She sniffled once, twice, then collapsed, bawling, onto the couch. If what I felt before was bad, this was beyond awful. I wanted to shoot myself. I gingerly lowered myself next to her, and she threw herself around me.  
>"What am I doing wrong?" she cried, "Whatever it is I-I'll fix it!" <em>I can't let this go on.<em>I hushed her, placing my arms around her. That quieted her down a little bit, she wasn't crying as hard. I hesitated. I doubt she would understand what love even was anymore, but I couldn't keep myself away from her, not when we were going to be penned in the same apartment for the foreseeable future. And, as much as I would have hated saying it like this, I still needed her. I moved my face slowly towards hers, agonizing over what I was doing. When we were only inches apart, I pulled back, sickened by what I was trying to do. This woman wasn't right in the head, and there I was trying to get close with her! I slumped back, obviously confusing the splicer. Again, she knew something was off, but she couldn't put the pieces together. After a few minutes of sitting in relative silence, she tilted her head towards the door, which I understood to mean, "Can we go outside now?"  
>Twenty minutes later I was locking up the apartment, trying to keep up with an excited young lady. This would be her first trip outside since I found her, and she was understandably anxious. I'm not quite sure why <em>outside<em> appealed so much to her, at the time I figured she was just bored, like I had been so long ago. She would walk alongside me, then she would scamper up some light pole and onto the glass bulkhead: she was still part splicer. We walked aimlessly, into the night. The city was quiet now, the war had died down immeasurably. That doesn't mean it was safe- just like even a corpse is still riddled with disease. She seemed more comfortable out here: she knew how things worked. I didn't have to explain to her about the Daddies or the Sisters, she already knew about this part of Rapture before I took her. I still felt awful, the numbness of earlier had worn off. I had given up, though, until later. Postponing the inevitable.  
>We eventually came to the entrance of an old movie theatre. We were prying open the back of an old vending machine to try and find some more food. Suddenly, a sharp hiss sliced through the air, and a familiar object- a spider splicer meat hook- embedded itself in the wall beside me. I scrambled for my weapon, a beat-up Thompson I had found during one of my numerous looting trips. My shotgun had been bent out of shape after I had to use it as a pry bar to lever open a locked door, and was still waiting to be fixed back at the apartment. I cursed under my breath as I realized I had only one magazine left: every shot was going to have to count. I turned to warn the girl, but she had already melted away into the shadows. <em>I'm alone.<em>I moved out into the openness of the middle of the street, I didn't want to give the spiders any cover to sneak up me. they had power, but I had range. _Their hooks were easy to avoid as long as I could see them coming,_ I thought to myself. I looked around for the girl, but I couldn't let it distract me. I didn't think she would abandon me, especially not here. The waiting was killing me: these things always took their time in a fight. I didn't like killing them, they reminded me too much of my splicer. Finally, I heard a russle from behind a crate. I shouldered the Thompson, but was too slow. I felt it before I could see it, one of the hooks tore into my leg. I yelped and collapsed like a sack of potatoes, bleeding profusely. I saw the spider closing in, it wasn't bothering to be sneaky anymore. I fired full auto for a second and a half before the gun jammed, an expended shell had caught in the receiver. I tried to dislodge it, but it was too late. The spider was on top of me, readying itself for the killing blow. It dropped its jaws and screamed, the thing had spliced itself so much it probably forget how to speak. In that split second, I jammed the butt of my gun into the face of the splicer, and dragged myself a few agonizing yards away while it reeled from the hit. Now that I'd pissed it off, it was done fooling around. It readied another hook, it knew it couldn't miss at that range. I mouthed a quick prayer, in too much pain to even cry. Suddenly, a pair of familiar hands sprung up from behind the splicer and grabbed it's neck. As I started to slide into unconsciousness, I head a sickening snap. _That's twice now,_I thought before I blacked out.  
>The first thing I saw when I came to was the discarded body of the splicer. It's head was twisted so far around it was almost backwards. <em>How did she do that?<em>I tried to move, but my leg exploded with pain. The hook had been hastily pulled out, but the cut hadn't been tied off yet. The wound was clotting enough to where I wouldn't bleed to death, but I knew I would be weak for a while. I rolled over onto my stomach, and caught sight of the girl. She was staring intently, unblinkingly, at something I couldn't see. I pushed myself up onto my leg, pain shooting through the lower half of my body as I did. I hobbled over to the girl, then stopped dead. She was looking at an old movie poster, advertising the film _My Gun for Hire._Dead center of the advertisement was the female lead, an actress named Veronica White. I turned and looked at the girl, then back at the poster, the back again. The girl standing beside me, as both of us now realized, was none other than Veronica White, the lady on the poster. "Dear god," I moaned, then passed out.


End file.
